


And All The Time He’s Mumbling

by monarchyofroses



Series: Dead Poets Society [1]
Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Aged-Up Characters (17 years old), Ben Hanscom Loves Beverly Marsh, Canon Movie Era, Multi, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, no pennywise though, soulmate talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-15 22:05:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13622451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monarchyofroses/pseuds/monarchyofroses
Summary: “It suits you.”Richie frowned. “Huh?”“Being in love,” Ben clarified. “It suits you.”Richie smiled, then, so hard that it made Ben wonder how his face had not splitted in two. “I’m in fucking limerence, man.”





	And All The Time He’s Mumbling

**Author's Note:**

> rated t for tozier, richard.
> 
> so, this is 1994, bill clinton is the president of the united states and nicole brown simpson is murdered. none of these events are mentioned in here, anyway. 
> 
> i already clarified in the tags but here we go again: AGED UP CHARACTERS. they are in their penultimate year of school and seven friends moving together to new york is -obviously- way more logical than a cannibal clown.
> 
> hope you enjoy!

Ben adored spring.

There was something magic in the sudden and collective blossoming of the roses in the park, of the dandelions in the grasslands that made a good job at hiding pieces of the asphalt, of the Chinese jasmine plants in Stan's backyard.

There was something magic in the daytime shortening to give the nighttime extra hours.

There was something magic in Beverly and her colourful, vintage skirts making their oh so long-awaited reappareance. In the brightness in Bill's eyes when he managed to drag Georgie to the Aladdin with them. In the exquisite scent of cinnamon emanating from Mike's freshly baked rustic apple tarts. 

And there was something magic, definitely, in Eddie and Richie, and the sure and rebellious way in which they chose each other at every second for all eternity. 

It was a normal day at the Quarry, the seven of them having decided the previous afternoon that they would skip their classes to take advantage of the nice weather and eat some sandwiches outdoors. The end of their junior year of school was turning out to be much less dramatic than the group had expected, their grades were going well and their social lifes too and everyone was sure of what they would do once they graduated. Well, everyone but Ben. Eddie and Richie were the first ones to announce that they would move to New York and although initially the news caused panic, (because _what the fuck, does that mean we have to plan our futures now, too?_ ) Stan followed suit with the convenient surprise that he decided to apply to New York University. Then Bill, undoubtedly persuaded by Stan, commented that his favourite uncle was about to open a franchise in Manhattan so he was maybe or maybe not planning on working with him there. Mike, who until that moment had seemed to be the most faithful to Derry, shrugged and admitted that a new start in another state sounded kind of cool. _Kind of cool_. As if a new start in another state wasn't, duh, a new start in another state. And when it was time to make a final decision and Beverly looked at him with such desperation in her eyes, the same desperation that led all their friends to not think of Derry as anything but the racist and homophobic town that had caused them so much pain as children, well; it made sense right? New York made sense. With his friends, his girlfriend, and a considerable distance from home if something went wrong. He didn't even have to think it twice. 

Then why did he?

 

“Okay, Eddie, stop trying to suck Richie's soul through his lips and come with me to take a dip. Will ya?" 

 

It took a minute for Ben to realize that the petition came from Beverly, still lying on the grass with her head on his lap, since he was too focused on Richie's arms tightening around Eddie's waist. On Richie's mouth swallowing Eddie's amused laugh. On Eddie pulling their faces away to be able to give him _the look_ , even though his body language showed no sign of wanting to be somewhere else that wasn't his boyfriend's legs. On Richie sighing and loosening his grip but not without first tasting the skin of Eddie's jaw once more. Ben frowned. They made sense too.

After another five minutes of insistence, Bevery got her way and Ben watched her walk away with Eddie until they dived into the water. The laughter and the screaming already extinguished of the others returned when the pair joined them, Stan's voice yelling that there were only two party poopers left to win over. Richie laughed and responded him in a very animated way that he was hoping to watch him drown. 

Ben adored spring. And his friends. 

 

“Can I ask you something?" Was what Ben decided to go with to break the silence between them two, and it wasn't until his eyes met Richie's, -who had just lit a cigarette- that he understood how badly his question could be taken.

 

"Of course you can, Benny Ben, what's going on in that huge head of yours?"

 

 _Right. This is Richie. Speak without fear, Ben_.

 

“Well... a lot of things, actually." 

 

Richie managed to smile with the cigarette between his teeth. "Shit, this is going to be a deep ass talk, isn't it?" Ben nodded, Richie inhaled and exhaled an abundant puff of smoke. "Alright. Spit it out."

 

“Okay. I just don’t want you to get offended.” 

 

“I don’t have gonorrhea.”

 

Ben huffed out a laugh. “That wasn’t my question.”

 

“I do the fucking in my relationship.” 

 

“It’s not like you keep that one as a secret...” 

 

“Yes, I really enjoy listening to Elton John.” 

 

It was impossible to hide the amusement at that point. “How could you get offended by something like that?” 

 

“My point is that there is no way a question would offend me, man. Especially if it comes from someone as well-intentioned as you.” 

 

Ben adored spring. And Richie Tozier.

 

“Doesn’t it scare you that someday you and Eddie could break up?” 

 

Richie remained silent for several seconds, watching the scene unfold in front of them: Eddie and Mike were being splash-attacked by Beverly and Stan, while Bill stayed out of the fight doubled up with laughter. Mike was doing his best to defend himself and crying out for Eddie to do the same, but it was useless, Eddie was determined to try and reason a truce. “No.” He finally said. 

 

Ben frowned. How was it possible to love someone without being afraid of losing them? “Really?”

 

“I mean, it’s not like Eddie and I would ever break up.” And the conviction that soaked every word, the security and love in Richie’s eyes when he diverted the attention from his friends (from Eddie) and focused it on Ben again; caused a painful tug in his chest. It must have been pretty obvious, because almost instantly Richie’s eyes lost their brightness and became filled with worry. “Hey, is... is everything okay between you and Molly?” 

 

“Everything is fine,” He affirmed, and it was true. “It’s just. How can you be so sure, Richie?”

 

Richie dumped the already consumed cigarette between the long leaves of the lawn. “I just am.” 

 

“You just are?” 

 

“Do you know anything about soulmates?” 

 

“I,” Ben paused, confused. “Do you think that you and Eddie are soulmates?”

 

“I don’t _think_ we are soulmates, Ben” _Oh, okay. That’s my real name. Okay. This is new_. “I _know_ we are.”

 

Ben had sought information about soulmates when he met Beverly Marsh in seventh grade and he spent a whole week having dreams about her beautiful blue eyes. The school librarian was not very helpful, considering that the only thing she did after hearing his request was to look at him like he’d grown two heads and find him -very unwillingly- a weird book written by some mature woman that ended up being too heterosexual, even for him. However, his enamoured thirteen years old self had to settle for the inconclusive information provided by the love segments in a couple of magazines and for fantasizing about Beverly having dreams about his not-as-beautiful green eyes. 

Then Beverly kissed Bill, and Ben burned the paper sheets that he had taken the time to trim and keep neatly in his notebook. 

Then Beverly told him that she hadn’t felt anything during that kiss, but it was way too late for Ben to get those paper sheets back. 

 

“I’m not educated on the subject,” He confessed. “Would you mind enlightening me?”

 

“You mean try to convince you that I’m not stupid?” 

 

“Oh, come on. You know I’m a romantic,” Richie had read enough of his poems to be one hundred percent sure of that. “And you also know I don’t think that you’re stupid.”

 

“Why did you say the romantic part first?” Richie asked, grinning. 

 

“Who is interrogating who?” 

 

“Fine, fine.” Ben lent his gaze to the childish games of the rest of the group for a moment, who seemed to not get tired of running around the water, wanting to give Richie some sort of space to think about his answer. It could be said that getting serious with Richie was quite an experience but, honestly, Richie himself was a whole damn experience. He could not take his eyes off the television for a second during a Star Wars marathon, and then lose the thread of another film’s story after four minutes. He could forget to feed his beloved dog God-knows-how-many nights in a row, and then show up at school every morning with different types of fresh fruit so Eddie could “have a balanced breakfast.” He could only get straight A’s in his exams and then claim to have a headache from reading two paragraphs of a book. So, yes. A whole damn experience. “I actually don’t have a lot of information. Soulmates ain’t something concrete, you just know they exist and that’s it.”

 

“How?”

 

“Same way you know God exists.” And that… well. It made sense. “If I asked you right now why are you so sure that God exists, what would you tell me?”

 

“I just am,” Ben conceded. Richie hummed in approval. “But I could also try and convince you with my testimonies.” 

 

“True, but at the end of the day, that would be on me. I could try and convince you with my stories, too, but it wouldn’t make a difference if you didn’t believe me, because Eddie will still be my soulmate.” 

 

“And God will still be real,” Ben teased, and got a pair of blank eyes in response. “Right, Rich?”

 

“Yeah, whatever. Mr. Cobain just blew his brains out with a shotgun, Haystack. Give me a fucking break.”

 

Ben raised both of his hands in surrender, while a mental chronometer went on in his head along with Richie’s second cigarette. Seconds until Eddie would call him out. “I’m not a Jehova’s witness.” 

 

“...Yet.” 

 

“Richie!” Eleven seconds. “That’s two in a row!”

 

“Baby, it could be worse. Like, three in a row.” 

 

The expression on Eddie’s face was worthy of a photograph. Soaked from head to toe and arms folded with water up to the waist, frowning and biting the inside of his cheek for good measure. “Do I need to go there?”

 

“It depends, are we going to make out?”

 

Stan made the mistake of laughing out loud, and Eddie punished him with his killer glance before returning it to Richie. “That’s the last one of this afternoon.”

 

“Alright, I love you!” 

 

Eddie ignored his boyfriend’s dramatic yell, but there was a new and special smile on his face -the one that he reserved only for Richie- that was sure making him proud at that moment.

 

“So.”

 

“So…”

 

“I’m not a Jehova’s witness. And I will never be.”

 

Richie laughed, hard, like he wasn’t expecting Ben to pick up that part of the conversation in particular; curls falling freely over freedom-loving eyes. “I believe you. I promise.” A new comfortable silence fell between them when Ben decided to just keep quiet while Richie consumed his cigarette, giving him the opportunity to change the subject or go on with their soulmate talk. Any other person in the world would have gotten to the point by then, like, ‘Richie, I’m not sure about going to New York because I’m scared about me and Beverly breaking up someday’ but Ben knew better than that. Ben knew how to get the most deep and sincere answers, those that made him go to bed with his head full of information and his heart full of hope. “You don’t know it from the beginning, you know?” Richie muttered once that the remains of his cigarette found his previous one in the grass. “Fuck, you can never realize if you don’t think about it. If you ask Eddie about this, he would probably turn red and tell you that it’s a silly idea of mine.” 

 

“He doesn’t believe in soulmates?” 

 

“He is a rational. Everything has to be scientifically proven for him to believe it, or he has to see it with his own eyes” With a mother disgustingly lying to him since he was born, who could blame the guy? “He likes the idea, though. He talks about it more than I do. But the thing is, I don’t even need him to believe it to be sure that we are. I can’t be afraid when I know that we are, Ben. We just make sense. Call it whatever you like. Soulmates, meant to be, _alter egos_ like Eddie insists on calling us” Richie shaked his head, a fond laugh accompanying the movement. “He’s ruined me for anyone else, you know? And I did the same to him. I can’t imagine a week without him, let alone a whole fucking life. That’s not going to happen, we won’t let it happen. No one will know how to read me like an open book like he does. No one will be able to find answers without doing more than looking at his eyes the way I do. Thinking about sharing what we share with somebody else, about waking up next to somebody else, about touching somebody else… it just feels wrong. It feels horribly wrong. And I don’t want to typecast all the soulmates in our situation, I’m sure that not all of them are two white monogamous teenagers with depency problems, this is just my experience. Our experience. And it’s possible that you and Beverly are soulmates as well, Benny, but that’s something you need to find out on your own. Eddie is the only thing in my life that I’m sure of.”

 

And that was the meaning of life, wasn’t it? That was the reason why the sun still shone every day despite the world falling apart. Why people could get up feeling really suicidal and not blow their brains out with a shotgun like Mr. Cobain. Because just around the corner, in every nook, Richie Tozier could be talking about Eddie Kaspbrak. Ben Hanscom could be reading poetry to Beverly Marsh. Oscar Wilde could be crying for Alfred Douglas. Hugh Grant could be kissing Elizabeth Hurley. Jane Wagner could be waiting for the shitty society to allow her to marry Lily Tomlin. 

 

“It suits you.” 

 

Richie frowned. “Huh?” 

 

“Being in love,” He clarified. “It suits you.”

 

Richie smiled, then, so hard that it made Ben wonder how his face had not splitted in two. “I’m in fucking limerence, man.”

 

“Was that a big word coming out of your mouth?” Beverly asked him, appearing from nowhere, with Stan by her side and the rest of the group behind them. Ben wouldn’t have been able to stop looking at her even if he wanted to: Beverly looked like out of one of those romantic cliché movies with her reddish hair ruffled by the water and the wind and wrapped up in a towel that matched the color of her eyes. “Eddie must do wonders.”

 

“He sure does, especially with his tongue.”

 

Everyone bursted out in laughter and, well, everyone but Eddie; _poor Eddie_ flushed and newly settled on Richie’s lap, now dressing and soaking one of his boyfriend’s (too big on him) Red Hot Chili Peppers t-shirt, who didn’t even let a second go by to mutter under his breath: “Beep beep, dipshit.”

 

The night fell, according to Richie, faster than Richard Nixon’s positive image did. He managed to get a chuckle out of Stan with that one, who tried to hide it with a not at all convincing _it’s not funny if you joke about something you didn’t experience, you idiot_. Mike was the first to leave, Bill and Stan following him a few minutes later. When Richie got up to check if the shirt he had left on the branch of a tree was already dry and the change in Beverly’s breathing confirmed that she was -indeed- asleep, Ben found Eddie’s gaze and knew that he, too, was about to lose himself in the silence. It wasn’t something that he could appreciate often, after all. Having Richie Tozier as your partner. It probably wasn’t something that Eddie would like to appreciate often, either.

 

“You’re coming to New York with us, right?”

 

Ben could think of a million answers, and they were all more questions. _How did you know? Who else knows? Since when do you read minds, Eddie?_

Taking a look at his **soulmate** , however, peacefully asleep on his thighs, he understood that they were not important. He didn’t need Eddie to answer them, because Ben had his own response engraved right in his heart. “I would follow you guys to the end of the world.”

**Author's Note:**

> kudos and comments are always appreciated ❤️


End file.
